Produced in 2007 in conjunction with the exhibition Damien Hirst: Superstition at Gagosian Gallery, London and Gagosian Gallery, Beverly Hills.

In these works, Hirst expands on the iconic motif of the butterfly as a symbol of the beauty and inherent fragility of life, reaching new heights of complexity, refined detail and radiance.

Throughout his work over the last twenty-five years, Hirst has taken a direct and challenging approach to ideas about existence. His work provokes a critical dialogue by calling into question our awareness and convictions about the boundaries that separate desire and fear, life and death, reason and faith, love and hate. In his art, Hirst uses the tools and iconography of science and religion, creating sculptures and paintings whose beauty and intensity offer the viewer insight into art that transcends our familiar understanding of those domains.

In this exhibition, Hirst creates paintings whose classical shapes and compositions take their inspiration from stained glass church windows. From the soaring gothic arch in Aubade - Crown of Glory to the intricate form of the rose window in Friday Night in the Royal Station Hotel - Conception, the works all portray an ornate, fractal geometry and perfect, mathematical symmetry that is awe-inspiring.

Damien Hirst

Damien Hirst was born in Bristol in 1965. He first came to public attention in 1988 when he conceived and curated ‘Freeze’, an exhibition of his own work and that of his contemporaries at Goldsmiths college, staged in a disused London warehouse. Since this time Hirst has become widely recognised as one of the most influential artists of his generation.

Through a varied practise of installation, sculpture, painting and drawing Hirst has sought to explore the complex relationship between art, life and death. Alongside over 80 solo exhibitions he has worked on numerous curatorial projects. In 2008, Hirst took the unprecedented step of bypassing gallery involvement in selling 244 new works at a Sotheby’s, London auction entitled ‘Beautiful Inside My Head Forever’.